BERKELEY / City Council refuses to repair fountain in park / Civic Center's centerpiece hasn't worked for 40 years

Patrick Hoge, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, April 21, 2005

Photo: CHRIS HARDY

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cw_berkeleyfountain
chronwatch. There is a fountain in front of Berkeley's City Hall in the MLK Civic Center park that hasn't worked for years. It's in the park in front of City Hall, at Martin Luther King and Allston, in downtown berkeley. Repair would be part of Berkeley's Civic Center revamp. 5/20/03 in San Francisco.
CHRIS HARDY / The Chronicle Ran on: 03-06-2005 Ran on: 03-06-2005 Ran on: 03-06-2005 Ran on: 04-07-2005 Ran on: 04-21-2005
The Art Deco fountain was dry in 2003, when this picture was taken, and it's still dry today. Ran on: 04-21-2005
The Art Deco fountain was dry in 2003, when this picture was taken, and it's still dry today. less

cw_berkeleyfountain
chronwatch. There is a fountain in front of Berkeley's City Hall in the MLK Civic Center park that hasn't worked for years. It's in the park in front of City Hall, at Martin Luther King and ... more

Photo: CHRIS HARDY

BERKELEY / City Council refuses to repair fountain in park / Civic Center's centerpiece hasn't worked for 40 years

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Citing a lack of maintenance money, Berkeley's City Council is refusing to pay the cost of fixing its Civic Center fountain, which was designed by noted architects including Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan but has not worked for about 40 years.

The unanimous vote Tuesday night to delay the nearly $400,000 repair job is the latest twist in a decade-long effort to revive the defunct water feature.

"I'm pretty much done with it unless some money comes forward from somewhere," Mark Seleznow, the city's parks director, said after the council meeting.

Seleznow had recommended the city defer fixing the cement Art Deco fountain, which includes parts from a fountain featured at the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco, because it would cost $60,000 a year to maintain and result in service cuts elsewhere.

The city is grappling with a projected $8.9 million deficit in next year's general fund.

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City Manager Phil Kamlarz hoped to fix the fountain as part of a planned $1 million overhaul of Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, however, and he found one-time money from higher-than-expected tax collections to pay for the repairs and three years of maintenance.

The fountain, designed in the 1940s, stopped working for unknown reasons in the 1960s, and, spurred by Chronicle readers' complaints, it has appeared on the Chronicle Watch list for nearly 700 days.

But the political support to repair the fountain just wasn't there. On Tuesday, for example, citizens asked why money should go to refurbish a long- neglected fountain instead of youth services or community swimming pools.

The council agreed to spend $40,000 to install turtle sculptures around the fountain and $60,000 on infrastructure so that other planned improvements to the park will not have to be torn up to fix the fountain if money is ever found for the job in the future.

"People will be happy to see the turtles," Mayor Tom Bates said before voting.

The idea for the turtles, which refer to various Native American stories about the creation of North America on the back of a turtle after a flood, was first proposed by a 1991 city task force that recommended replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day, which the city did.

The vision called for a shallow pool with a giant turtle in the center spouting water that children could play in.

After voter-approved funding became available in 1997, critics objected to altering the fountain. The preservationists succeeded in 1998 in getting the fountain and the entire Civic Center district placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After numerous public meetings, a compromise was reached that would allow removable turtles to be installed around the fountain, as well as plaques recognizing existing and extinct tribes from throughout the Americas.

Despite the council's decision to leave the fountain dry, a selection committee was expected Wednesday night to recommend an artist to create the turtles, said Mark Mennucci, the city's project manager on the park overhaul.

Other renovation work on the park is slated to include landscaping and irrigation system upgrades, new benches and trash receptacles, moving a flagpole and installing a play area.